You saw it as it happened — an honest man mugged by the media

NOTHING illustrates the cruelty of modern politics like the stitching up of Royston Brady in the run-up to the European elections, and his eventual vindication when it was too late to do him any good.

Royston had given an interview to Hot Press last November in which he claimed that his late father, a taxi driver, had been abducted the night before the Dublin/Monaghan bombings in 1974. His father's taxi was used as a getaway vehicle by the bombers, he believed.

He repeated this story in a Sunday Independent interview a week before the election. And then the avalanche happened. The story dominated Joe Duffy's RTÉ Liveline programme on the Wednesday before polling day. A family member of one of the bombing victims accused Brady of trying to make political capital. Liveline introduced an unnamed former garda, 'Michael', who claimed to have been involved in the investigation of the bombings.